


caught in the reminder

by karples



Category: DCU (Comics), Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 09:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8280347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karples/pseuds/karples
Summary: In which Dick and Tiger sort through the aftermath of the attack on Spyral.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from the runners by the naked & famous.
> 
> many thanks to lyktorna for listening to me struggle through this fic!

“We should give it a name,” Dick says. “Not like, you know, how people say That New Year’s, but like how people name natural disasters after distant relatives they hate or really obnoxious parents in PTA meetings.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Tiger tells him. In the dark, buildings loom like half-formed ribcages, upturned tables splayed like broken limbs. Suddenly, Tiger feels very much a stranger to St. Hadrian’s, like that one time he returned to Kandahar with Alia and found it dramatically transformed. He said to Alia, _This isn’t where I grew up_ , and Alia laughed at him: _Didja expect it to stay the same?_

Now, Tiger wonders if it was less that Kandahar had changed, and more that he’d become unrecognizable to it. That he’d changed more than Kandahar had changed, so much that it no longer had a place for him.

“We could do it Gotham-style,” Dick suggests, kicking a loose brick. The clink as it bounces is almost melodic. “Make it dramatic. The Siege on Spyral, the Spider’s Netz. Dr. Daedalus’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”

“It doesn’t need a name. Only three people will remember it.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not worth remembering,” Dick replies.

Tiger stops, and Dick ambles onward slowly, leisurely, hands tucked into his pockets. For once, the dormitory windows are unlit, the students evacuated and sent home with modified memories.

 _Just an earthquake_ , Tiger thinks, surveying the bullet-pocked walls. _Just._

Tiger curls his fingers into a fist. “Speaking of remembering,” he says, “are we going to talk about it?”

Dick turns toward Tiger and waits. He’s smiling faintly, face limned in moonlight. “About what?”

“How you’d let Dr. Daedalus erase you from...” Tiger sighs and spreads out his palms, placating. Dick doesn’t react. “That it wouldn’t matter.” _To us,_ he doesn’t say. _To me, to everyone who loves you._

“Of course it matters,” Dick says, outwardly unconcerned. “But it turned out okay, didn’t it?”

“And if it hadn’t?”

Dick shrugs. He cuts a startlingly small and mundane figure in his ratty t-shirt and sweats, his muddy sneakers. “No use thinking about what-ifs and had-beens, Tig.”

Had-beens, such as: When a typhoon ambushed them in Thailand, and they shared the motel’s last available cot, listening to the rain and wind batter the storm shutters. When Dick woke Tiger from a night terror, and when Tiger did the same for Dick. Waltzing on a cruise ship docked in Adelaide, Dick’s cheek pressed to Tiger’s shoulder, as close as lovers; sprinting through clotted crowds and sunbright corridors, Dick laughing an arm’s length away.

A sour, thick feeling spreads through Tiger’s chest. In a parallel universe, Tiger could have been left with nothing. Not even a body to find, not even memories to revisit.

“Humor me,” Tiger says.

Dick’s expression softens. Tiger’s made many mistakes, but he doesn’t know which one’s being forgiven. “Tiger, it would’ve still been okay. I’d’ve wormed my way into everyone’s lives again, I’m impossible like that.”

“But you didn’t think you’d survive it,” Tiger murmurs. “Netz’s Somnus program.”

Dick almost breaks eye contact. “I--no. Not really.”

It makes all the difference. Dick believes in miracles, but he still believed that he wouldn’t be saved from Otto Netz. Tiger wants to show Dick that he cares, that he sympathizes, that he knows what it’s like to be forgotten by people and places that he thought would remember him forever, but it’s not nearly the same. Not in scale, not in consequence.

They stand in silence, separated by blocks of upturned pavement like pale icebergs, neither of them knowing where to put their empty hands.

“You did it for Helena,” Tiger says. “You love her.”

Dick dips his chin in acknowledgement.

“And you love me,” Tiger says, lower.

Dick makes a funny little noise, soft and involuntary. “Yeah, Tiger. I do.”

Tiger crushes his misplaced sense of relief. “If you love us, then it still matters. It wouldn’t have been okay. You wouldn’t have been alright.”

“Well, you don’t know that, do you? Like, I’m not thrilled at the idea of starting over from scratch, but if it had happened, I wouldn’t’ve complained _too_ hard, you know? I don’t even _like_ who I’ve become, and you can’t say that you’ve never... You’ve never...” Dick ruffles his hair and sighs. “Do you ever wish that you were...”

“Somebody else?” Tiger prompts.

“No, a better version of yourself. Upgraded. Minus all the mistakes and the...” A trace of pain crosses Dick’s face, otherwise so composed. “Okay, _now_ I get what you're worried about. Maybe forty percent of me was okay with... you know. Forty-five tops, but that's...”

“That’s enough,” Tiger says, as benignly as he can manage. Dick arches an eyebrow. “I’m not trying to make you relive it. All I wanted was to hear you say it aloud.”

“I know it sounds bad,” Dick admits. He’s more agitated than angry, and Tiger approaches Dick, each step even and measured, glass and gravel crunching underfoot. “The truth always sounds bad.”

“The truth _is_ bad,” Tiger points out. He halts in front of Dick, his hands still empty. He used to calm Dick with a palm on the back of the neck, stroking from skull to spine. Now, he takes Dick’s elbow too gingerly, too tentatively, to escape Dick’s notice. “You did what you had to do, and we’re all happier for it. That mindset is still bad.”

“You’re one to talk. Leaving your friends to die is also bad,” Dick mutters, then winces in shame. “Sorry.”

“I’m not proud of what I did. I don’t regret it either. I did only what seemed necessary.”

Dick nods. Tiger lifts his hand away, but Dick’s fingers seastar over Tiger’s wrist, a cartography of scars and callouses that Tiger’s mapped out with touch, teeth, tongue.

“I would’ve come for you if your memories were wiped,” Dick says to Tiger’s shirt. “Even if we aren’t a thing anymore, and I really have to ask-- _Checkmate_ , Tiger? You picked _Maxwell Lord_ , the evilest man in the world?”

“You give him too much credit,” Tiger says, ignoring Dick’s breath on his collar.

“Honestly? I wish that were true.” Dick tilts back a little, and Tiger relearns what it’s like to have Dick’s undivided attention, how terrifying it is. Not in a life-or-death way, but the way that Alia used to make him feel, so aware, so awake, so transparent.

The corner of Dick’s mouth pulls up. “Come with me to Gotham,” he offers quietly. “I’m pretty sure Helena’s going too. We can... we can be together again, all three of us.”

“There’s no place for me in Gotham,” Tiger says.

“How do you figure?”

“Because I’m needed here, for the foreseeable future. Spyral needs to be rebuilt, facilities and administration alike. It served a purpose, once. It needs to serve that purpose again.”

Dick considers Tiger, eyes clear and without judgment. “Your place was never really with Spyral.”

“This time, it can be.” Tiger brushes a curl back from Dick’s brow, pleased at how Dick’s forehead smooths beneath his fingers. _One last indulgence_ , he tells himself. He forfeited his position in Dick’s life when he defected to Lord. “We should return to the bunker soon. Your flight is in four hours.”

“I’ll visit often,” Dick promises, relinquishing Tiger’s arm with a squeeze. “So much that you’ll want to stop seeing me altogether.”

“Even if we aren’t ‘a thing’ anymore.”

“‘Even if,’” Dick echoes, more for his own benefit than for Tiger’s. The hanging moon is a miniscule pinprick of white in Dick's pupils. Tiger can’t see himself reflected in them, but his shadow falls over Dick’s body, stenciled onto Dick’s skin, impermanent.

“In the meantime,” Dick says, smiling again. Almost fondly, he pats the dislocated door of the old gym, and begins to walk toward the chapel, its steeple stretching skyward. Tiger trails after him, never far behind. “We should think about naming our ‘thing,’ too.”


End file.
